Sunday, 1 May 2016

POP! Heroes – New 52 Aquaman (PX Previews Exclusive)

Company: Funko

Series: Heroes DC
Universe

Year: 2013 (?)

When I started collecting POPs back in 2013, I was pretty
darn sure I didn’t want an Aquaman POP. He was pretty readily available, but he
was easily the least desirable of the Justice League members available at the
time. So I passed him up, thinking if I ever changed my mind I’d just pick him
up then – after all, he was a core member of the Justice League, they’d keep
him in production indefinitely, wouldn’t they?

Well, as anyone who’s since tried to track him down since
can attest, the answer is “NO!!!”, accompanied by a swift blow to the testicles.
Regular Aquaman came and went in a relative blink of an eye. The New 52
versions of him, GL, Flash, Supes, Batman and Wonder Woman showed up in Sydney
stores back in about mid-2013 and sold through just as rapidly. Most of them started
popping up again in the last few months – and Aquaman wasn’t among the
restocks, either. I resigned myself to using a BvS Aquaman for my Justice
League, as reviewed here.
This was fine and all, but wasn’t ideal.

Yet it seemed that the chase wasn’t over; While visiting New
York, I found myself in the Midtown Comics store near Times Square, and this
guy was lurking on the shelves there. Huzzah!

Now, when most of the New 52 versions of some
previously-released POPs came out, they reused the same sculpts and slightly
altered the paint. Aquaman was different, though – gone was the Shazam head,
replaced instead with a new hair sculpt. The body remains the same, though it’s
been upgraded to a slightly different paint job – gold on the scales instead of
orange.

And on the topic of paint, this one is pretty cleanly
executed. Last year I bought the metallic version of Deathstroke, and I was
disappointed to discover that his back hadn’t been painted properly, so I was afraid
the same thing would happen with Aquaman’s scales here. But fortunately it’s
been done properly here, as you can see in the back picture below.

Aquaman didn’t exactly blow me away, but it is quite
satisfying to have found him. The Jason Momoa figure is a great take on him
(and really, quite a bit better in terms of sculpting and design) but there’s
something appealing about having all of the classics too.